Explaining geographic, social, and economic differences as drivers of internal migrations in Viet Nam: Empirical findings from push and pull forces analysis

Abstract

Viet Nam has deeply experienced internal migration during its development history, typically movements from rural to urban and across regions since the launch of economic reform policy in 1986. This article adopts the cost-minimization approach to calculate the push and pull forces of the internal migrations across geographic distances of provinces and then explains those forces along with socio-economic factors within 63 provinces and cities in Viet Nam based on the census data during the period 2010-2019. The empirical findings from the solution to cost-migration equations between the number of migrants and the inverse distance across 63 provinces reported that the push and pull forces are quite heteroskedastic, mostly due to differences in geographic, social, and economic development. Not surprisingly, the Mekong River Delta (MRD) is still the most repulsive region for migrants, accounting for 30% of the total number migrants of the country and notable 98% of migrants who moved to the Southeastern (SE) region as the most attractive destination. It is obviously proven that the push and pull forces of migrations in a province correlate strongly and significantly with economic factors including relative incomes and poverty rate rather than human factors such as urbanization, population, and labor forces. Finally, discussions about policy implications of equitable investments across regions in Viet Nam are really necessary and could be a potential for creating job opportunities and improving standards of livelihoods.